Clinton blames Comey and Wikileaks. I blame Clinton and the DNC primarily based on my reporting, and Comey and other factors count as secondary. While "fake" news certainly was present, the real information operation was around amplifying and distorting the WikiLeaks content, and the very neat way in which "e-mails" played into Clinton's previously-existing e-mail scandal.

I'm not going to lie. Homegrown information operations by the Deplorables probably amplified the Russian information ops far beyond what they dreamed of. Reddit is, IMHO, a much more effective PSYOP organization than the Russian intelligence community.

I think a lot of people are focusing on the quick fix and not the long term solution, which is to emphasize critical thinking in our education systems. The problem is that many people don't have the ability to recognize and disregard "fake news", not that Facebook allows it to exist.

Facebook could have avoided all of this when they decided to open up the platform to everyone other than college students. That's when the average political and emotional intelligence level of the user pool took a steep nosedive, and why many people using Facebook at the time (including me) jumped ship as fast as possible.

Facebook could have avoided all of this when they decided to open up the platform to everyone other than college students. That's when the average political and emotional intelligence level of the user pool took a steep nosedive, and why many people using Facebook at the time (including me) jumped ship as fast as possible.

To be fair, how would they have known something like this would have occurred?

I think a lot of people are focusing on the quick fix and not the long term solution, which is to emphasize critical thinking in our education systems. The problem is that many people don't have the ability to recognize and disregard "fake news", not that Facebook allows it to exist.

Facebook could have avoided all of this when they decided to open up the platform to everyone other than college students. That's when the average political and emotional intelligence level of the user pool took a steep nosedive, and why many people using Facebook at the time (including me) jumped ship as fast as possible.

To be fair, how would they have known something like this would have occurred?

"Fake News" really only became a thing fairly recently.

Fake news has ALWAYS existed, we call them rumors. The difference is the ability to mass publish, disseminate, and polish rumors.

Do people actually think Hillary lost due to fake news when there was so much damning real news?

Damning how? Is she in trouble I have not heard about? Did she have to pay a $25m fraud settlement or something?

More to the point I think you are missing the systemic nature of this. Hillary has been the target of fake news since the GOP started investigating her in the 1990s. All those radio blowhards calling her a criminal constantly led to "lock her up" chants (famously led by General Flynn--actual criminal who actually did damning things and is actually going to be locked up) and so on. Nobody is saying people read a fake news story and it changed their minds--propaganda is not that simple.

I have a strict personal "No facebook" rule.I don't have an accnt, I don't go there, and I don't get any information from FB. I tend to think anything that comes from there is probably B.S. to begin with.Consider the source, is also a rule of mine lol.

There are differences in substance between information operations and marketing, but the intent is the same: to get a particular group of people to do a particular thing

I find it enlightening and disturbing the various ways in which espionage and marketing are similar. Whether it's on the influencing side as this article discusses, or on the surveillance side as so many other articles have covered, the similarities are many. Why is one so acceptable and the other is not? Why do we decry the 'surveillance state' yet willingly assist the 'surveillance corporation'? Has marketing always embraced the tools of espionage so widely and openly? It's a fascinating subject in my opinion. And one that probably deserves better coverage (at least outside of Ars) because it's not clear to me where it's taking us as a society.

I have a strict personal "No facebook" rule.I don't have an accnt, I don't go there, and I don't get any information from FB. I tend to think anything that comes from there is probably B.S. to begin with.Consider the source, is also a rule of mine lol.

Oh, you have an account there. You just haven't logged in yet. But trust me, FB has it ready and waiting for you when you do.

Facebook got rid of most of its human-based review team, in favor of an 'algorithmic' approach.

I suspect it was because humans would filter out stories that generated clicks and long online dwell times. Telling the human reviewers "it's obviously false, but it makes us money" would be reported, while it's easy to automatically evaluate the response to stories and promote the ones that make Facebook money.

This is also a consequence of investing so much social capital in corporate platforms with sole owners. The early internet was much more federated. Everybody could run their own site, email, bulletin board, etc. In a federated system, the damage can be more limited because conspiracy nutters go to conspiracy sites, whereas grandma keeping in touch with grandkids used email or something. I can STILL do those things but everybody who comes to My Awesome Site(TM) will still use Facebook too.

Facebook could have avoided all of this when they decided to open up the platform to everyone other than college students. That's when the average political and emotional intelligence level of the user pool took a steep nosedive, and why many people using Facebook at the time (including me) jumped ship as fast as possible.

To be fair, how would they have known something like this would have occurred?

"Fake News" really only became a thing fairly recently.

This post is hard to figure... is he/she joking?

In case you are not joking, you just won an "all expenses" trip to the Bahamas. Click here. LOL.

I have a strict personal "No facebook" rule.I don't have an accnt, I don't go there, and I don't get any information from FB. I tend to think anything that comes from there is probably B.S. to begin with.Consider the source, is also a rule of mine lol.

I envy you. Unfortunately, it's the only way most of my friends and family communicate, so I'm stuck scrolling through Kermit sipping tea memes to find out about the birth of a cousin.

The answer is to teach and learn critical thinking skills in the whole population.

At broad scale that's true, but that's something FB can do nothing about. And there is no reason why the problem can't be attacked on multiple fronts - both education and technology.

All that said, people currently in power have no reason to improve critical thinking skills of the citizens, as their bullshit would become too obvious and people won't be as easy to manipulate. So the best we can hope for is for companies like FB and Google to try some technical solutions.

2) Facebook is culpable. This phenomenon has been observable (and measurable, in the Russian case) for at least two years. Facebook has chosen to turn a blind eye to propaganda and deception in order to increase their advertising revenue. Their statement on this subject are interesting, but they had a moral responsibility to discuss this publicly prior to the election and did not do so. Folks who are tossing around Zuckerberg as a 2020 presidential candidate would do well to keep this in mind.

Lastly, call in InfoWars "grey" news, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge that MSM was totally in the pocket of DNC/Dems is completely dishonest. You cannot have a MSM that is behind a particular candidate at rates of over 90% and then act as if InfoWars is "grey news".

A lot of you would do well to get outside your bubble and reflexive dismissal of sources you don't like for whatever reason.

Facebook got rid of most of its human-based review team, in favor of an 'algorithmic' approach.

I suspect it was because humans would filter out stories that generated clicks and long online dwell times. Telling the human reviewers "it's obviously false, but it makes us money" would be reported, while it's easy to automatically evaluate the response to stories and promote the ones that make Facebook money.

Or they were just trying to save money since you don't pay an algorithm. In any case, it looks like they may be going back to using people

This is also a consequence of investing so much social capital in corporate platforms with sole owners. The early internet was much more federated. Everybody could run their own site, email, bulletin board, etc. In a federated system, the damage can be more limited because conspiracy nutters go to conspiracy sites, whereas grandma keeping in touch with grandkids used email or something. I can STILL do those things but everybody who comes to My Awesome Site(TM) will still use Facebook too.

It's rather more nuanced. Those small conspiracy sites still exist, but the people who read run them, and the people who read them, realized that they could take their message to Facebook and reach a much wider audience. At the same time, Facebook had essentially zero controls on what was classified as "news" and thus these conspiracies were given weight that they did not deserve, because people see something tagged as news and believed it.

Then the heavyweights got involved. Pretty much anyone who needed to push an agenda realized that they could push their own version of reality onto FB as news and then sockpuppet amplify it with fake accounts, until it went viral (still hate that term). A whole lot of time, energy, and money was invested in building up the necessary moving parts to manipulate massive numbers of people on FB.

All the while these actors, essentially propagandists, are working very hard to undermine real news services like the AP, Reuters, and anyone whose reporting presents a viewpoint not in alignment with their own.

At this point, you have an entire body of people who think FB is a good source of news, yet don't trust mainstream media organizations because they are furiously demonized by their own news sources.

I don't think FB has any real hope of curbing the relentless onslaught of fake news and propaganda without taking drastic actions, any of which is likely to force large parts of their userbase to abandon the platform. And therein lies the rub. Is FB willing to give up a very heavily engaged part of their userbase, and risk the loss of lots of ad revenue? We'll see, but i doubt it.

Lastly, call in InfoWars "grey" news, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge that MSM was totally in the pocket of DNC/Dems is completely dishonest. You cannot have a MSM that is behind a particular candidate at rates of over 90% and then act as if InfoWars is "grey news".

A lot of you would do well to get outside your bubble and reflexive dismissal of sources you don't like for whatever reason.

While I don't doubt that Russia tries to push an agenda, I categorically deny that it had any significant impact. And if anybody thinks that Alex Jones ( while not fact checking any of his stories ) is a Russian agent I have a bridge to sell to you.

Also there is just the fact that the mainstream media also push an agenda. The main difference is that they fact check and don't lie. But they curate information heavily as well. The family connections between high CNN/MSNBC people and democrats is pretty funny. Not saying there is any bad faith there but its just inevitable that this colors reporting. I still remember the barrage of "Nobody spied on Donald Trump and his entourage he is just an idiot" posts every where. And then suddenly "Of course they spied on him but it was all ok" when it turned out that Susan unmasked surveillance of some of his entourage.

A Minbari never lies but never tells the whole truth.

The media is like a hive mind. When America goes to war like in Irak they suddenly become state press and take up all unverified comments about weapons of mass destruction as fact. And now they all parrot the Russia bullshit. I still want to see some proof though. ANYTHING. The piss dossier was an embarrassment already. To think that Trump won because of this beggars believe when you compare his campaign events to the empty gym halls Hillary had. She lost because she was a terrible terrible candidate and actually should most likely be in jail for digitally deleting evidence in a federal investigation.